Two Social Platforms Go Live Next Week
Posted by Nick O'Neill on March 28th, 2008 4:42 PMIf managing your applications on three platforms wasn’t already enough for you, two more platforms will be going live next week: Orkut and hi5. While there are few details as to viral distribution on Orkut, hi5 has provided details about their viral distribution channels. Of particular significance is that “there are no limits to how many friends a user can invite.” This sounds similar to the Facebook platform when it launched.
These launches will be more significant than the Bebo launch considering that hi5 and Orkut are the 8th and 10th (respectively) most visited sites on the web according to Alexa.com. With no limits on invitations for friends we may see a similar gold rush to those applications that launched on the Facebook platform. Both platforms will launch using the OpenSocial standard bringing the total number of potential users via OpenSocial far greater than Facebook.
Add together MySpace’s platform and Facebook’s viral distribution channels and hi5 is setting up to be a significant launch. Next week will surely be a big week as the reach of social platforms is set to almost double. For one person, attempting to monitor all the action on all the platforms is extremely challenging but extremely exciting. For development teams building on each of the platforms, being ready for launch on all sites is not only challenging but close to impossible.
This first quarter of this year has been transformational for the social platform space.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Not sure if “impossible” is quite the right word; it’s definitely possible, especially if you’ve made sure to keep up with Google’s various releases on the Orkut sandbox. Our OpenSocial app (Hypercube) on MySpace required minor changes and Orkut is good to go. Hi5 will also take minor changes, but we’ll be ready!